


Suits

by dramatorama



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 07:41:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3928543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramatorama/pseuds/dramatorama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're on the fast track to the good life. It's all in the demeanour. Mid-game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Suits

You're on the fast track to the good life. It's all in the demeanour. Keep your head up, but don't look into another man's eyes unless you're ready for fighting: there's a fine line under the plate between a man who's happy with his lot in life, and a man with no fucking lot at all but some serious brain damage. Do _not,_ under any circumstances, smile unless you're in the killing mood. (You're always in the killing mood, these days, but sometimes it's fun to play with your food.) 

You don't drink on the job, but the job ain't too taxing. You find things that don't want to be found, you shut mouths that won't shut themselves. (On occasion you're the President's feckless hunting dogs, and that's okay too, because part of you is always baying for blood.) You get two days off in every seven, free drinks from Corneo or Chang or whoever's trying to buy their way into the suits' laps this week. (You, all of you, say _suits_ like it's a curse, because it comes with connotations. Tailoring, chauffeurs; yours is a uniform, theirs is a lifestyle choice, and you know the difference even if they don't. Or is it the other way around? The job's teaching you how to think, as well.) 

Now and again you get a job that stinks if you sniff too closely. Best to fake being a mouthbreather for as long as it takes, and never question the boss. Sometimes when things are rough you ask yourself who the boss's boss is, and that's usually when the memo arrives on your desk: Stop thinking, printed clean and lonely on the same thick, plush cardboard as the boss's business cards; that's your team's cue to head out early and tear up Wall Market till the daytime streetlights come on, and then stagger back into the office for a day of cleaning puke stains from yesterday's shirt and drinking strong coffee and _absolutely no work._

The time goes fast and hard, so you capture it in neon freeze-frame: polaroids of bodies lit by greasy pink and yellow have the dates scrawled beneath them in messy marker. You have a timeline of kills, should you wish for it, in manila folders. (These are neatly filed by secretaries who smile winsomely at you when you swagger into the office and perch on the edges of their desks to flirt; if they took a little time to read they'd run screaming, and you'd have to shoot them. None of them are curious enough to look.) You don't have a timeline of regrets; those are ill-lit and blurry. (You remember them more clearly than any photograph could capture.) You remember a stray limb caught under a metal girder, a slapped cheek, a doll drowning in a puddle. These are your totems.


End file.
